Authors: Graeme Kent
‘It was pretty obvious that you were concealing something,’ she told him. ‘I’ve never known you late for a meal before, yet you only just got to Papa Noah’s last feast in time. You were obviously worried about something, so I suppose you had hidden Mr Abalolo in the ark for some reason. Then, when the storm started, you disappeared. Again this was out of character. Normally you would have been in the thick of the action, taking control. I can only assume that you were hurrying Mr Abalolo away from the ark to safety somewhere. Later, when Shem had a dispute with someone on the track outside the mission, it seemed likely that his assailant was Mr Abalolo.’
‘How so?’ asked Brother John
‘Shem was badly marked up in the fight. Apart from Sergeant Kella, very few Solomon Islanders would be big enough to hurt a Tikopian. I’m guessing that you were having one of your secret consultations with Mr Abalolo when Shem happened along. The two men fought over which of them should be taking over the Church of the Blessed Ark, or something of that nature, and you persuaded Abalolo to run away before anyone else came along. At the time it seemed to be too much of a coincidence that you should just happen be in the vicinity to break up the fight and allow Mr Abalolo to escape into the bush while you brought Shem to the mission, instead of pursuing his attacker, which would have been more in character.’
‘Anything else?’ asked Brother John.
‘I was interested in your actions when we reached Tikopia. You didn’t seem very worried about Mr Abalolo’s disappearance from his church on the island. This led me to surmise that you already knew where he was. Unluckily for you, Dr Maddy told us that Abalolo was supposed to be on Malaita.’
‘You don’t miss much, do you?’ asked Brother John.
‘Am I right?’ asked Sister Conchita.
‘More or less,’ said the missionary. ‘For some time it had been obvious that the Church of the Blessed Ark was attracting a lot of Tikopians into its ranks on Malaita. At the same time Abalolo was worried because the revival of the pagan faith on Tikopia was affecting his church numbers adversely. It was obvious that the Church of the Blessed Ark was being infiltrated by Tikopians on Malaita, who associated the ark with the big canoe icon of their pagan beliefs. Against my advice he came up to Malaita to persuade the new adherents of Papa Noah’s church to return to Christianity. To that end, he insisted on attending the feast before the storm. I managed to hide him in the ark, as that was a
tabu
place and I didn’t think anyone except Papa Noah would dare enter it.’ He sighed. ‘That was before you decided to gatecrash.’
‘That was why you asked me to attend Papa Noah’s funeral on your behalf, wasn’t it?’ she asked. ‘You had to get back into the bush to look after Abalolo.’
‘He wasn’t doing too well on his own,’ said Brother John. ‘There isn’t much bush country on Tikopia. He needed all the help he could get on Malaita.’
‘Why did you meet me on the beach today?’
‘I heard that you were coming up to teach at Bethezda this morning. I felt that I owed it to you to explain as much as I knew, so I left Abalolo here while I came down to meet you. As you saw, when we got back, he was a prisoner.’
Before he could say any more, six of the islanders who had escorted them up to Bethezda came over. One of them slashed Abalolo’s bonds with a knife and hauled the still silent Tikopian to his feet. The men gestured to their captives to follow the track leading up the mountain on the far side of the village. Obediently Sister Conchita and her two companions started walking. The islanders, armed with spears, fell in silently behind them.
‘Anything else you want to know?’ asked Brother John, looking over his shoulder as they left the huts behind them.
‘Yes: who is the killman?’ asked Sister Conchita.
‘I have no idea,’ said Brother John.
They walked for three hours before stopping at another small village, where they were given more water and some yams as they rested. When they set off again, Sister Conchita noticed that they had a fresh set of guards. It was almost as if they were being handed on from one group of escorts to another. This reinforced her conviction that she and the two men were being conducted somewhere specific, and that each set of captors would be glad when their part in the journey was over.
All the time they were climbing into the mountains. Occasionally they passed groups of women returning from their gardens down the path, carrying huge loads of bananas and firewood on their backs. Whenever they passed, the local women hurried off the track out of sight into the trees. Sister Conchita was reminded of the story of one of the last great inter-tribe battles that had taken place in this part of the high bush, as told to her once by Father Pierre. One village had invaded another and killed thirty of the men there, severing their heads with machetes. The weeping women had been forced to carry the heads of their husbands, fathers and brothers in their arms up to the village of the victorious clan, where they had been decapitated in turn.
By mid-afternoon it was raining steadily. The smell of decay was overpowering, as if the whole forest was in the process of rotting around them. Mist rose from the ground, obscuring the vegetation to knee height. They passed hovering hornets, wasps and bees all humming in different keys. Lizards lurked camouflaged on leaves, their long tongues flickering out to trap unwary butterflies and moths. Once they crossed a wide river with much deliberate splashing and shouting to deter predators. Downstream Sister Conchita could hear the steady
pukpuk
grunt of a crocodile, the sound from which the creature got its local name.
They passed another set of gardens enclosed by low fences consisting of tottering bamboo poles linked by jungle vines. The tilled soil within the enclosure was mainly devoted to the cultivation of yams. Each root had been buried in a separate hole scooped in the ground and marked by a short pole around which the vegetable’s wispy creeper could curl and grow.
They spent their first night in another small bush village. Just before it grew dark, Sister Conchita caught a glimpse of mountain peaks some distance ahead of them. They were encased in clouds and seemed as far away as ever.
Brother John and Abalolo were taken off under guard to the men’s house on the far side of the clearing. Sister Conchita was installed in a recently vacated hut. Judging by its size and the presence of a number of pig tusks tied to a wall with creepers, she guessed it to be the residence of the village headman. A fresh bed of leaves had been spread for her on the beaten earth of the floor, and she was fed with fresh coconut milk and bananas. Later, in the dusk, she was taken by a group of women to a stream to wash. She tried to engage them in conversation, but no one would respond. She noticed that unlike the wiry saltwater dwellers, these denizens of the high bush were small, stunted people, bearing on their almost naked bodies the unmistakable scars of yaws and ringworm.
She was taken back to the hut through the trees, utterly exhausted from her day’s climbing in the stifling heat. She fell asleep at once, despite the scurrying sound of rats on the ground near her bed.
The next morning, soon after dawn and a meal of pineapples, the three of them were walking again. Six new guards from the latest village were now in charge of them, as slight, silent and expressionless as the previous ones had been. As they moved out, Sister Conchita caught a glimpse of the escorts from the afternoon of the previous day hurrying back home with obvious relief down the track.
They walked for another six hours. The track was steeper than ever, and even the lithe and fit Sister Conchita found the going hard as they headed up the mountain path in the baking oven-like heat. It was soon raining steadily again. The nun had heard that 150 inches could fall in a year this high in the bush on Malaita. When at last the rain ceased reluctantly for an hour or so, dozens of birds used the respite to swoop down through the glistening golden foliage of the sodden trees and settle on the ground, pecking avariciously at the helpless caterpillars and worms that had been washed from the branches during the recent downpour.
Sister Conchita could tell from occasional glimpses of the sun through the crowded trees that it was almost noon when they stopped for the last time. The bushmen who had been guiding them stood in a straight line across the track behind them. For a heart-stopping moment Sister Conchita wondered if her surmise had been wrong all along and that the three of them had been brought to this remote area merely to be slaughtered and their bodies left to decompose. If that should be the case, it could be years before their remains were discovered.
To her relief, the nun saw that the islanders were making no attempt to fall on them. Instead they were pointing urgently with their spears up the track as a sign that their three captives should continue on their own. A foolhardy Brother John decided to ignore their implicit instructions and in a fit of bravado tried to shoulder his way back down the path in the direction from which they had come. Deftly two of the bushmen adjusted their grips on the thin, pliable spears and used them as whiplash rods, smashing them vigorously in concert against the big missionary’s body. The Guadalcanal man howled with pain and hurried ignominiously back to rejoin the other two. Again the bush warriors indicated with short jabbing movements of their spears that their prisoners should continue up the path alone.
‘I really think we should continue walking,’ said Sister Conchita.
Brother John ran his hands over his body with rueful tenderness. ‘Good idea!’ he said, taking the lead with a will up the track.
The path bent through the trees and undergrowth at the top of the current incline. As they turned, Sister Conchita glanced back over her shoulder. The bushmen were still regarding them intently from below.
The trees were beginning to thin out ahead of the three tired travellers. Sister Conchita was aware of an unexpected cool breeze coming from before them. By now they must be several thousand feet above sea level, she thought. After another hundred yards of hard walking they emerged from the trees and stopped in surprise. They were looking upon what could only be described as a freak of nature. Although the forested mountain peaks could still be seen looming in the distance, immediately before them was more than an acre of flat land surrounded by dozens of blossoming banana plants. On the other side of the field of tough cropped grass, the steaming jungle started to flourish again on the way up to the cloud-obscured peaks. The sight they were witnessing with stupefaction was almost like an oasis in a desert.
A hundred yards away Sergeant Kella was sitting on a mound of grass in the clearing. A fire of small sticks smouldered beside him. He was eating a chunk of baked taro and the remains of a river slug. He greeted them with a nod as they crossed the grass in his direction. He removed some of the charred skin of the vegetable with his fingers and dropped it fastidiously to the ground.
‘I expect you’re wondering why I sent for you,’ he said.
‘I think you just got rounded up in the net almost by accident,’ said Kella. ‘I thought it was about time that I questioned this mysterious Abalolo, so I called in some favours, found out where he was and arranged for him to be brought up here to me. It just so happened that Brother John had already linked up with him.’
‘Are you actually apologizing to me, Sergeant Kella?’ asked Sister Conchita. ‘That’s a first!’
‘Not at all,’ said the sergeant. ‘I was just explaining the situation to you. The people who were helping me out didn’t know whether I just wanted the Tikopian or all three of you.’
‘Like we all look the same,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘A Tikopian, a Guadalcanal man and a Boston nun are practically indistinguishable. It was an understandable mistake. Anyone could have made it.’
‘I didn’t say that either,’ said Kella unhappily.
But Sister Conchita was only getting into her stride. ‘So you got us in a package deal. Good housekeeping! Did we come cheaper than way, Sergeant Kella? Is that why I’ve been climbing a mountain under duress for a day and a half?’
Sister Conchita was beginning to achieve a modified sense of enjoyment out of the obvious discomfiture of the police sergeant, but her heart was not really in it. After all, it was only sensible that Kella should want to interrogate the Tikopian who kept flitting in and out of his investigation in such a maddening manner. It was fairly obvious too that Abalolo would have needed a trustworthy fellow Anglican missionary as a source of contact on Malaita, and Brother John filled the bill there, which accounted for the Guadalcanal man’s inclusion in the party. As for her own role up here in the high bush, well, Ben Kella had not yet articulated it, but it was becoming fairly obvious to Sister Conchita why he needed her on this occasion, as he had at least once before.
‘Are you enjoying giving me a hard time?’ asked Kella.
‘Not as much as I’d hoped,’ Sister Conchita said.
They were standing on the field of rough
batiki
grass. At Kella’s request Brother John and Abalolo had gone back to the bush to collect branches with which to make lean-to huts for the night. Cool winds rolled across the unexpected haven provided by the smooth green plain, channelled refreshingly through the narrow fissures and valleys in the forested mountains above them. Behind them lay the jungle. The three sides of the flat field ahead of them were bounded by hundreds of green-leaved banana plants, each growing to a height of over twenty feet. It was an incongruous sight, a few hundred yards of rare open beauty somehow carved by nature out of the sweltering enclosed bush and dropped pristine and intact from the skies before the tangled wooded ground started rising steeply again.
‘Come with me,’ said Kella. ‘I want to show you something. I’d heard about this place, but I’ve never seen it before.’
They reached the plantation of banana bushes fringing the field. With their sturdy bases enfolded tightly in huge paddle-shaped green leaves and large clusters of fruit, they looked to Sister Conchita as much like trees as bushes. Kella skirted the bright walls of leaves, stopping occasionally to part the large fronds and peer into the hidden interior of the plantation. The nun began to grow impatient.